Blitzball

Watching the SuperBowl last night got me reminiscing about Spira's Blitzball league. Every Final Fantasy has a prominent mini-game that you can sink hours into, and like any good video game side distraction, the rewards apply to the main quest. Blitzball was a great change of pace from the two previous games' card battling games, and to my surprise, Square-Enix made underwater soccer a lot of fun.

What made the Blitzball mini-game so great was all of the little details that you could keep track of outside the arena. You had a roster to maintain, with contracts to extend or cut, and in FFX-2 the players you recruited were NPC's that hung out in the various towns you visited. Add the roster micromanagement to the cool idea of making Wakka's boss fight special moves a direct reflection of his Blitzball performance, and what resulted was a basic soccer stat game with a ton of bells and whistles. 

It helps when the mini-game distraction makes sense in the overall plot. Spira is a group of islands, so it makes sense that their favorite sport is played underwater, and Blitzball increases in popularity when attacks by the giant Jesus-fish increase as well. The more depressed and fearful the islanders of Spira are, the more they crave Blitzball to take their minds off their problems. Every major settlement in the country has a team that represents them, and certain towns react differently when your main character, (Tidus, Blitzball superstar) rolls in. 

The Luca Goers, the New York Yankees of Blitzball. 

We received two games that featured Blitzball in it, and I desperately want a third. Sometimes I daydream about a full Blitzball game, like Fifa, but with town recruitment and expansion teams now that Sin isn't breaking cities anymore. Or imagine a Blitzball game setup like Street Hoops, where you play superstars such as Nimrook or Bickson, improving your back-alley blitz skills to one day move into the big leagues. I love Blitzball, and while real life sports are great and all, they always make me pine for the fake ones.